A serial bus system is known from IEEE Standard 1394 [1], the different terminals (nodes) being connected either by a 4-6-wire cable or by an optical waveguide. At least one node may be designed in such a way that it can assume additional management functions for the network (bus management).
In addition to the above standard, there is a bus-independent extension specified under the name HAVi (Home Audio/Video interoperability) [2]. This HAVi specification describes in particular the remote control of devices using a resource manager which reserves a resource (device) on request and also releases it again.
In the HAVi specification, we have described a distributed model, the devices being controlled by control modules known as device control modules (DCMs). These DCMs operate as a software element on the device intended to perform control functions on a different device. A DCM is always specific to a certain device or class of devices.